CapRadio:
Low-Income, Communities Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Heatwave Impacts
All over California, a wave of extreme heat has broken records. In Sacramento, the city has broken the record for most over-100 degree days in a calendar year, beating a 1988 record of 41 days. Downtown Sacramento also recorded an all-time high temperature of 116 degrees on Sept. 6, beating the previous record of 114 degrees on July 17 in 1925. (Secaira, 9/8)
Los Angeles Times:
Sweating Through The Heat Wave In California’s Hottest County
So far this year, Imperial’s average high temperature is more than 6 degrees warmer than any other California county, federal data show. Over the last five years, it’s gotten less than half as much rain than the next-driest county, on average. (Roth, 9/8)
Al Jazeera:
As Heatwave Smothers California, Not Everyone Can Cool Down
By three in the afternoon, the temperatures in this working-class Latino neighbourhood of east Los Angeles have reached nearly 37C (99F). Patrons of a Mexican restaurant in Boyle Heights sit beneath whirring fans and street vendors selling cups of fruit recline under umbrellas, wiping the sweat off their brows. Those who leave the refuge of the shade are immediately hit with a wave of heat from the baking streets. (Osgood, 9/8)
KVPR:
During Record-Breaking Heat Wave, Cooling Centers Are ‘Godsend’ For Bakersfield Residents
Bakersfield residents turned to public cooling centers this week to beat the heat, as the mercury soared past 115 degrees, obliterating century-old daily records across the San Joaquin Valley. Dozens gathered Tuesday afternoon at The Mission at Kern County, one of two cooling centers in the broiling city. Volunteers handed out cold bottles of water and meals, while Jeffrey Hudson and other visitors basked in front of the air conditioning. “This is really, really a godsend right here,” he says. (Yeager, 9/8)
New York Post:
Gavin Newsom Slammed For AC ‘Double Standard’ Amid Heatwave
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom was slammed as a hypocrite Wednesday for wearing a fleece coat in a seemingly air-conditioned room while urging residents to “save energy” amid a historic heat wave. (O’Neill and Hernandez, 9/7)
The Washington Post:
No September On Record In The West Has Seen A Heat Wave Like This
The heat wave that’s been gripping California and other parts of the West for 10 days and counting is the most severe ever recorded in September, weather experts have said — confirming what California’s governor is calling the “hottest and longest on record” for the month. … And it’s not yet over — while the region’s heat wave peaked on Tuesday, it’s expected to continue until Saturday, ending after a total of 12 days. (Samenow, 9/9)
USA Today:
Heat Waves Are Deadliest Natural Disasters In The US. Here’s Why
Heat waves like the one California has been experiencing for the past week are the single most deadly natural disasters the nation faces each year, killing more people than hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards or extreme cold. “We never think of heat waves as mass casualty events, but they are,” said Kristie Ebi, a University of Washington epidemiologist who studies global health and extreme heat events. (Weise, 9/8)
AP:
US May Expand Monkeypox Vaccine Eligibility To Men With HIV
U.S. officials are considering broadening recommendations for who gets vaccinated against monkeypox, possibly to include many men with HIV or those recently diagnosed with other sexually transmitted diseases. Driving the discussion is a study released Thursday showing that a higher-than-expected share of monkeypox infections are in people with other sexually transmitted infections. (Stobbe, 9/8)
CNBC:
HIV Positive People Hospitalized With Monkeypox More Often, CDC Says
People living with HIV who have monkeypox are hospitalized more than twice as often as other patients diagnosed with the rapidly spreading virus, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a report published Thursday, the CDC found that 38% of nearly 2,000 people diagnosed with monkeypox between May and July were living with HIV. Among 1,300 monkeypox patients with more detailed clinical data, 8% of HIV-positive individuals were hospitalized compared with 3% of people without HIV infection. (Kimball, 9/8)
CIDRAP:
HIV, Earlier STIs Common In US Monkeypox Patients
Surveillance data from eight US jurisdictions found a high prevalence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among people with monkeypox, a research team based at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today. In other developments, scientists from Europe today reported finding viable monkeypox viruses in anal and urethral samples from monkeypox patients, adding more evidence for a sexual transmission route, and the US government took more steps to expand testing and explore the efficacy of different vaccination strategies. (Schnirring, 9/8)
CIDRAP:
Study Raises Questions On Dose-Sparing Monkeypox Vaccine Approach
Late last week a notable group of Dutch researchers published a preprint study on the neutralizing antibodies produced by two subcutaneous doses of Bavarian Nordic’s monkeypox vaccine, Jynneos (MVA), and it indicated the dose-sparing strategy might not yield a very strong immune response. (Soucheray, 9/8)
Los Angeles Daily News:
Ferrer Doubles Down On Indoor Mask Mandate For Those Near COVID-Positive People
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer on Thursday, Sept. 8, doubled down on her position that students and staff on school campuses must wear a mask indoors for 10 days if they’ve been in close contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus, despite increasing pressure to drop the mandate. (Tat, 9/8)
Palm Springs Desert Sun:
Updated COVID-19 Bivalent Booster Shots Now Available In Coachella Valley
Coachella Valley residents can start scheduling appointments to receive either a Pfizer or Moderna omicron booster shot. (Sasic, 9/8)
The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat:
Updated COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Available In Sonoma County; Supplies Still Limited
Supplies of the new, updated COVID-19 booster have begun flowing into Sonoma County, just one week after federal health officials authorized use of the vaccine, which targets both the highly infectious omicron subvariants and the original strain. (Espinoza, 9/8)
San Francisco Chronicle:
U.S. Dedicates $300 Million To Next-Generation Tests
The White House has allocated $300 million for the accelerated development of next-generation coronavirus tests, the National Institutes of Health announced Thursday. Two new funding opportunities are available for diagnostic test manufacturers as part of the incentive program. The first opportunity is to develop accessible over-the-counter tests that can be used by people with disabilities, while the second seeks to improve the performance of over-the-counter tests to ensure ease of use. (Vaziri and Buchmann, 9/8)
Stat:
DHS Issues Rule To Revise Trump’s ‘Public Charge’ Policy, Easing Access To Health Services For Immigrants
The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday issued a new rule to revise a Trump administration policy that effectively discouraged non-citizen immigrants from using government-funded health services. The new rule clarifies that DHS will not classify non-citizens as “public charges” — a classification that could result in them being denied green cards — based on their use of health-related benefits and government services. (Trang, 9/8)
Modern Healthcare:
Biden Administration Finalizes ‘Public Charge’ Replacement
The U.S. will not deny green cards based on a person’s use of Medicaid and most other government health programs under a regulation published Thursday that rescinds the Trump-era “public charge” policy designed to discourage immigration. (Goldman, 9/8)
The Hill:
DHS Unwinds Trump-Era Public Charge Restrictions
The Biden administration stopped defending the Trump-era rule just months after taking office, but the new rule is a departure from a Trump-era policy requiring prospective new citizens to forecast whether they might at any time rely on government aid. The Trump-era rule barred those who received assistance from one program over the course of a year and roped in new programs that were previously excluded from consideration, including food stamps and medical assistance. (Beitsch, 9/8)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
San Diego County’s Suicide Rate Falls For Third Straight Year
Suicide rates continued to fall in 2021, the third-straight year that San Diego County has seen such a decrease, according to a report released by the San Diego County Suicide Prevention Council Thursday. (Sisson, 9/8)
Palm Springs Desert Sun:
Health Inspection Clears La Quinta School; Beef Issue Due To Vendor
After investigating possible food contamination at Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle School in La Quinta, county health inspectors gave the school a perfect score of 100 and an “A” rating. (Horwitz, 9/7)
San Francisco Chronicle:
SF DA Brooke Jenkins’ New Policy To Hold Drug Dealers Accountable
Faced with a scalding debate over how to handle open-air drug markets in downtown San Francisco and an overdose crisis that has claimed nearly 1,700 lives since the beginning of 2020, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins on Thursday announced a policy that will tighten penalties for users, in hope of diverting them into treatment. Beginning immediately, her office will aggregate drug possession and paraphernalia charges for people with five or more citations, so that they can be treated as a single case. (Swan, 9/8)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Alzheimer’s San Diego Hosts Grand Opening Of Its New Home During Annual Fundraising
Alzheimer’s San Diego has moved to a new home and to celebrate, the nonprofit held an ice cream social and grand opening Thursday during the annual San Diego Gives fundraising event. (Mapp, 9/8)
Los Angeles Times:
L.A’.s First Street Psychiatrist Makes His Sidewalk Rounds, Transforming Homeless Lives
Before she met Dr. Shayan Rab, Diana Silveria was the daughter of Elvis Presley, hanging out with Lynyrd Skynyrd on a skid row sidewalk. Three weeks later, Silveria, 51, was taking medication and slowly coming to reality in a room at the Russ, a single-room-occupancy hotel. (Smith, 9/7)
The Hill:
FDA Issues Safety Alert Over Reports Of Cancer In Scar Tissue Around Breast Implants
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning for doctors and patients on Thursday after it received reports of people with breast implants being diagnosed with multiple types of cancer. Binita Ashar, the director of the Office of Surgical and Infection Control Devices in the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a release that the FDA received reports of squamous cell carcinoma and various lymphomas in the capsule or scar tissue near the implants. (Gans, 9/8)
The New York Times:
FDA Approves Daxxify, A New Anti-Wrinkle Drug
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug that reduced the appearance of facial wrinkles for about six months, spurring competition in a market that for decades has been dominated by Botox. Revance Therapeutics, the maker of the new treatment, Daxxify, announced the approval on Thursday morning, saying its effects — by injection into the face along worry lines — lasted longer than other products on the market. (Jewett, 9/8)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento Homeless People Dying Of Thirst In Heat Wave
Sacramento’s temperatures soared to a record-breaking 116 degrees on Tuesday. The heat wave saw one of our unhoused neighbors living on the American River Parkway die of dehydration and heat stroke, one of the most easily preventable causes of death. This death was especially tragic because California recognizes a “Human Right to Water.” Assembly Bill 685, passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012, declares that every person in California “has the right to safe, clean, affordable and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking and sanitary purposes.” (Bob Erlenbusch and Sasha Harris-Lovett, 9/9)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento County Unable To Shelter Homeless During Heatwave
We are facing a severe heat wave in the Sacramento region: Temperatures are expected to soar into the triple digits for six consecutive days. This will disproportionately affect people without housing or access to air conditioning in an area with extremely limited shelter and cooling options. During the last comparable heat wave, from Aug. 13 through Aug. 19 in 2020, we saw 801 more people seek treatment in Sacramento emergency departments that did so the week before. (Alex Schmalz and Phil Summers, 9/7)
Los Angeles Daily News:
Los Angeles’ Outdated Emergency COVID Order
Mayor Eric Garcetti seems to be AWOL as the city of Los Angeles continues to live under an emergency COVID order that has not been updated since April. During the Labor Day weekend heat wave, an angry parent in Los Angeles posted a photo on Twitter of little kids playing basketball, all wearing masks, at the city’s Mar Vista recreation center. (Susan Shelley, 9/6)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Omicron Got Me After 2 Years As A COVID Hermit. Then, Doctors Made It Worse
I knew right away that it was going to be bad. It was a hot, humid night — almost 90 degrees — but my body was freezing. Putting on a sweatshirt and diving under a blanket couldn’t warm me up. My head, on the other hand, was on fire. I had a temperature over 100 degrees and needed ice packs piled on my forehead to cool down. The coughing wouldn’t stop. (Matthew Fleischer, 9/4)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Needs A Remedy For Doctors Who Spread COVID Disinformation
The patient’s wife was crying on the other end of the phone. It was 2020 and her husband was in the intensive-care unit with COVID. He was getting sicker each day, and the medicine their family doctor had prescribed “might have stopped working,” she explained. (Seema Yasmin, 9/6)
Palm Springs Desert Sun:
Monkeypox Won’t Remain An ‘MSM Disease’ Indefinitely, So Let’s Stop Treating It That Way
The world is currently experiencing by far the largest ever epidemic of human monkeypox, and the United States is disproportionately affected, accounting for 16,500 of the 46,000 confirmed cases globally. Monkeypox is a disease with a long incubation period, so it will take time to turn it around — we need to treat it with urgency, now. (Andrew Lover and Andrew Noymer, 8/26)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Law Still Polices Miscarriages. I Know — It Happened To Me
I remember the excitement of a sonogram ending with the squelch of the transducer being turned off and a very practiced clinical apology. There was something wrong. My body was experiencing a missed miscarriage — my body just missed the message that my had baby died. (Jessica Tebow, 9/8)
Los Angeles Times:
Yes On Prop 1. Even In Progressive California, Abortion Rights Need Constitutional Protection
On Nov. 8, California voters will decide on Proposition 1, an amendment to the state constitution explicitly guaranteeing the right to abortion and contraception. We wholeheartedly support this effort to enshrine in the state constitution a right that the majority of the Supreme Court wrote off as not deserving protection. This proposition is worthy of your vote. (9/5)
Los Angeles Times:
Endorsement: On The Ballot For A Third Time, Prop. 29 Is A Tired Retread That Could Hurt Dialysis Patients
Proposition 29 on the November ballot would set new requirements for all of the state’s dialysis centers, including forcing the clinics to hire unnecessary medical staff. If this proposal seems familiar that’s because it’s virtually the same as two previous measures on the 2018 and 2020 ballots. (9/6)
Palm Springs Desert Sun:
To Solve Our Mental Health Crisis, Kids Need Equal Access To Play
Learning loss, disengagement, anxiety and depression are soaring among young people, and our schools need a radical rethink to address this before the next academic year begins. (Renata Simril, 9/1)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Substance Use Is Causing Devastation And Suffering In San Diego. Here’s Why Street Health Is A Game Changer.
Four years ago, the Father Joe’s Villages Street Health team encountered a young man in his early 20s who was facing substance use disorder. The team came across this young man on numerous occasions during Street Health sessions. At those times, it learned about his situation and would offer him assistance as he struggled to get back on his feet. (Jim Vargas, 9/8)
Sacramento Bee:
How CA Veterans Break The Law To Heal From Psychedelic Drugs
Something outside was calling to Jose Martinez. So he answered. He burst through the front door of his rural San Bernardino County home and stared at the searing Mojave Desert sun, imploring our galaxy’s life force to grant him a fresh start. As tears streamed down his face, Martinez brokered a deal for his life, and swore to “wake my ass up (everyday) no matter what … but you’ve got to promise me one thing,” he pleaded. “No more hurting, no more hospitals — nothing. (Yousef Baig, 9/9)
